Kathryn Magendie (27 page)

TWENTY-FIVE

Father later said that some of the men from town went back with ropes they tied to trees, and worked their way to the other side, just as they had years before when that boy went missing. They searched hard for Sweetie, but the woods were thick, and they didn’t see how she would have survived the fall over the side anyway. There was talk of bears carrying her off, or that she just kept falling and rolling down too far in the woods for anyone to see. There was talk of how that haunted, lost boy picked her up and took her to his spirit cave to be his ghost bride. They only found the army jacket, ripped and hanging from a branch, but no other sign of her.

The women in town gathered at their churches and took up money to give Miss Mae a proper burial. I sat in the church, where the new preacher, Reverend Joseph, talked about Miss Mae as if he knew her. Reverend Seth had left town in the dead of the night. I sat at the end of the pew and stared at a spot on the wall until the funeral service was over. As the townspeople walked by me, they placed a hand on my shoulder and squeezed.

I asked Father to take me to Zemry so I could tell him, and he did. Zemry took me in his arms and held me as if he was my grandfather. He stroked my hair. He said, “Don’t you worry. Don’t you worry one bit. Don’t you worry.” He wouldn’t say anything else and then he stepped back, turned, and walked into the woods. He looked so very very old.

***

Nothing was ever said about Sweetie, and once Miss Mae was in the ground, she faded away, too. After Mother boxed up Peter’s clothes for the church to have, she hauled me to town to buy better clothes, ones not made for running free on mountains. I thought I saw the green-eyed man, but then I guessed I really hadn’t at all.

I tried to paint Sweetie’s face, but all I could do was stare at a blank canvas, as if she were a ghost I couldn’t capture, a dreamy dream. I put away the paints and decided right then and there that I’d never paint again.

In the ice cream shop, Mother bought me something sweet. Deidra and T. J. sat with their milkshakes. They wouldn’t look at me, no matter how hard I burned a hole into their backs. It was as I didn’t exist, either. As if I was nothing but a dream. As if they didn’t know who I was.

No one asked about Sweetie. No one said anything more about Miss Mae.

When Sweetie disappeared, she never existed at all.

***

Mother packed up her last wine glass in newspaper and dishcloths, and dusted her hands together. When she went outside to order the movers around, I went to the box, opened it, and broke every one of her wine glasses with Father’s ball peen hammer. The ping and crunch felt good,
tap tap tap tap tap . . . tap tap
. I heard whispers telling me,
Ha! That’s it! Break em all! Good warrior. That’ll show her
. But it was just my own mean voice.

We followed behind the moving van in our car and I watched the mountains disappear.

I was Melissa again. Nothing but a biological machine.

In
Ohio
, Father found a job at a private high school, and he sold his first novel called, “The Lost Last Years of a Last Lost Girl.” It was a familiar story. That was all it had ever been, one of Father’s stories. I’d just been too caught up in it. Of course.

Mother joined another ladies’ club and didn’t read Father’s book.

Peter visited me on my thirteenth birthday, and at Christmas, and Thanksgiving and at Easter. Or maybe I only dreamed him, because sometimes that’s just how fast things came and went and were forgotten. And after a time, as we moved again, and then again, new towns replaced old towns and the dream faded . . . faded . . . faded.

I set my teeth against any pain. Pain was biological, whether it was from the inside or the outside. Everything can be controlled, and if not controlled at least explained. But I knew, still, that pain on the inside could hurt in a much different and worse way than anything on the outside.

One summer. One dreamy summer. The only thing real is what was happening right at the moment it happened. That was what it meant to grow up.

My parents finally divorced. Father lived with his off and on women, grew his hair even longer and with it a beard, ate sushi, and traveled with his restless feet taking him here and there and everywhere. And Mother married a man who gave her what she needed, loved her. The change softened her, made her into someone I could, and did, like. How funny the way things happened in life.

Miss Lissa fell asleep, as long lost dreams make reality forgotten.

Until . . .

TWENTY-SIX

And this is not the end . . .

. . . the memory box. Release of the long sleep of denial.

Wake up
.

I stopped at a rock that looked like it may be Turtlehead Rock. I knew I was on the right old log trail. I took in air, deep into my lungs, and let it out.

“Sweetie? Sweetie?”

The wind blew against my back, pushed me forward. I went forward.

Old whispers drifted on the wind. How familiar they were.

When I came upon it, my skin tingled. My heart pumped blood through my veins. My synapses fired,
onesies twosies threesies, five-thousand
. The scientific biological body knew what to do. The woman who was me, a fallible creature, knew not what would happen next.

Whale Back Rock. I placed my palm on the rough lichened surface, closed my eyes, opened them.

I climbed on it, as we had when young, and looked around. It all looked the same, felt the same.

Surely, a biological machine, a woman such as me, can live here for as long as her body allows, as long as her heart beats, and then she can die here when her heart stops beating and let her cells decay here. Can one day have her ashes scattered here. There is everything I need here
.
This is Home
.
It’s been waiting for me. Just as Sweetie is waiting for me, as she promised
.

I pressed my face on the warm rock, the heat spread from my cheek to my entire body, then I climbed down and lay face up on the
Western North Carolina
earth. It thrummed with life and stories, both ancient and new. Everything, all of it, the entire summer, all rushed back, as if I was hurtling through space and time, forward then backward. In a real-time dream. I said, aloud, “I want to paint again.” And right then and there I could feel how my hand would move against the canvas; I would paint her face. That’s what I’d do.

I woke, from my dream, to a familiar whisper on the wind: Sweetie.
Wake up, Silly Brains. No time for sleeping. We got things to do. I got inneresting things to show you. Hurry before we get to be old granny women
.

How real my dreams were. How the sleep seemed like waking and the wake seemed like the dream. I turned my head, still lying upon that throbbing heart of the mountains. Turned my head and squinted my eyes against the tears rising up as little storms. Something . . .

. . . something fluttering in the rhododendron bushes.

A feather? A flowered vine hanging down? I crawled on my hands and knees, weak and shaky, for a closer look. There, within the branches. I reached out my trembling hand, touched it, pulled it free, pressed it in my hand, opened my hand. Red in the palm. A piece of bright red yarn. How? How could it be? Because it could.

She’d said she’d wait for me. Had I believed in the magic in her, buried deep inside of me?

“Sweetie? Sweetie? Are you here?”

From the trees above, I heard laughing, tree branches shaking. I knew those sounds. I remembered them. Not a bird, or squirrel, or chipmunk. Not the wind through the trees. Not a ghost. Not a memory. Not a thought, wish, or dream.

I stood, stared into the trees, searching, the red yarn soft in the palm of my hand, soft and light as a baby bird, as if it wasn’t even real.

“I don’t need the yarn, Sweetie. I can find you.”

Laughter. Shaking branches.

“Sweetie. Come down. Stop teasing me.” Not the wind. Not the critters. Not a ghost.

The mountain spirit claimed what it wanted. Without arrogance, without need. But sometimes the mountain spirit gave back instead of taking away. Because it must. Because that was how the magic worked. That was how friendship stood for all time. Even Steven. Forever.

She’d waited. No kind of sleep broke the bonds—just as Sweetie said.

“Sweetie! Sweetie! I see you! Come down!” I ran then, to the base of the tree, laughing, laughing, hot tears rolling.

Real. Not the wind. Not a ghost. Not a dream. Here. Now. Solid. A scientific woman would not lie.

I reached out and touched her scars. Ran my hands along her arms. I licked salt from my mouth. I caught up my sobs. I kissed her and her lips were spread in happy laughter.

And we were off, running, running, as if young again. We ran through the forest, laughing, laughing, laughing. Blood-bound sisters.

Beautiful biological wonders. Scientific anomalies.

. . . and did I ever want to leave her again? Did I ever want to forget again? Did I ever again wish for the long unknowing sleep? No. Never. Never. Ever.

THE END

Sweetie

Reader’s Guide

By Mary Ann Ledbetter

Baton Rouge
,
Louisiana

EPIGRAPHS

Magendie’s epigraphs offer intriguing possibilities for interpretation. How does her quotation from Ovid speak to the issues of affliction and friendship in the novel?

Explore the novel’s motifs of death and illusion as revealed by the old mountain song which is Magendie’s second epigraph.

SYMBOLS

Blood

Blood is one of the most powerful symbols associated with Sweetie. Her faded yellow cotton dress is “scattered with once-bright roses that had turned the color of old blood.”
 
Think of her torn finger, her slashed palm, her bloody handprint on the white robe. Discuss blood as a revealing symbol of Sweetie.

Birds

Throughout the novel, Sweetie is also closely associated with birds. What might the bird symbol mean in Sweetie’s life?

Scars

Sweetie’s external scars likely mimic her internal ones. The narrator sees “the scabs marching across her knees, the puckered skin racing up her right arm, the reddened zigzag that ran from her ankle up her thigh . . .” Think about the issue of emotional scarring in children.

THEMES

Sense of Belonging

Sweetie tells Melissa about the necessity of replacing the baby bird in its nest, “It belongs where it belongs, right? And where something belongs is where it’s got to stay, right?” How does her statement pertain just as strongly to herself and to Melissa?

Friendship

The narrator speaks of the bond of friendship as “. . . water finding water always. Like finding like. Need finding need.”
Melissa’s father says, “It’s at times irrational, but our instincts to survive and to form community and to bond with other human beings are quite strong.” Explore the ideas of survival, community, and friendship. Why are these concepts so crucial in the novel and in our own lives?

Maps

The grown narrator wonders if Sweetie had drawn maps “only for young me” or for her adult self. What might maps as symbol mean in the narrator’s life as both child and adult?

The Supernatural

Discuss belief in the supernatural as held by Sweetie’s grandfather, the granny woman, and Sweetie. Remember Sweetie’s magic tea and her mountain spirit, for example.

Destiny

The grown Melissa describes herself as “a scientific woman, a biological machine, made of fallible parts and calculating synaptic brain . . . A woman who believed only what science showed her and not what was felt with the heart.” How has her destiny followed that of her father? What do you imagine will be her new destiny?

Exclusion

Discuss the significant increase in today’s culture of the bullying of children. Think of the mean-spiritedness of T.J., Beatrice, and Deidre. What comment does Magendie seem to be making on this phenomenon?

Sweetie’s Affliction

What would it be like never to feel pain? According to Sweetie, is her affliction completely advantageous? What sorts of precautions must she take to maintain health? What is Magendie saying about pain of any kind?

Romance vs. Realism

Explore the dichotomy of Sweetie’s parents—her romantic mother and her realist father. Remember the mother’s hilarious food poems, strange menus, forced manners, European wine glasses, inflexible rules. She seems to deliberately mis-pronounce Sweetie’s name as “Sweet-tea.” Her father discusses slaughter houses at the dinner table, says there is an answer for everything, and writes novels with unintentionally funny titles. What is their marriage like? How does Melissa interact with them? Why do you think they eventually divorce?

Emotional Instability

How was Melissa’s physical and emotional being shaped by the transience and discord of her home life?

Secrets

Melissa writes of Sweetie, “She trusted me with the part of herself she’d hidden from the world, and in her way, presented back to me the gift to see what I had hidden inside myself.” What does she mean? What parts of themselves had each girl hidden?

By the end of the novel, does Melissa achieve further self-insight? Explore the apparent ambiguity in the novel's conclusion.

Death

Analyze Magendie's treatment of death. Discuss the dignity and beauty of the funeral rites performed on Mae by Sweetie and Melissa. How do they contrast with the traditional American way of death? Discuss any blessings to the bereaved that descend upon the girls as they minister to the body of Sweetie's mother.

Religion

What is Magendie saying about the vulnerability of naive people to manipulation by religious con artists?

STRUCTURE

Explore the structure of Magendie’s novel. What is gained by her use of two narrators, both the grown and the young Melissa?

SETTING

“Oh,
North Carolina
. What mysteries and secrets you hold,”
Magendie writes. Her setting functions almost as a character in the novel. How has Magendie enabled the reader to experience the mountain where Sweetie and Melissa ran free? What might Magendie mean by her vivid portrayal of such an Edenic existence? Discuss Magendie’s use of sensory images in her description of the
Smoky
Mountains
.

CHARACTERS

Why is Sweetie’s “affliction” so troubling to Melissa? How do the other children and townspeople view Sweetie and her mother? How does the fake healer use her affliction for his own purposes?

Discuss the troubling image of the burning barns in Grandmother Rosetta’s paintings. What do they seem to symbolize?

Trace the progression of Melissa’s physical and emotional development during her mountain summer with Sweetie. How does she mature?

What coping mechanism has Peter used in his relationship with his family?

Zemry embodies the wisdom of his native people. What lessons does he teach Sweetie and Melissa?